Why You Need a Value Map

This powerful, surprisingly simple tool will sharpen your edge and help your team or business grow faster.

Hi, Everyone.

With fiscal year 2026 wrapped up for many on June 30th, you may be thinking about where to invest for the year ahead. Use value mapping. It's customer-centered and shows you exactly where to focus your resources for maximum impact.

Here's how it works, starting with a customer delight mindset.

1. Identify your top 5-10 Value Drivers (I've used 7 in my fictitious example visual). These are the things customers care most about, uncovered through environmental scans, surveys, and industry research (and other methods, ask me how if you're interested).

2. Stack rank your value drivers from most impactful to least and score your current performance on each, 1 to 5, and plot it out. That zigzag line is your value curve.

3. Overlay your top 1 to 3 competitors on the same map.

Now you have a clean Value Map to share with your leadership team.

This is where it gets useful as a means of deciding where to invest (and where not to invest) your resources for the next strategy period.

Pro tip: Don't just chase the highest-ranked drivers. For any given value driver, pulling ahead is superior to catching up with competitors, regardless of stack rank position. Differentiation is the more effective path to customer delight and your own success.

Take my fictitious example, Fluent Language Academy. Their value map shows they should maintain driver #1 (curriculum effectiveness), since they're already excelling there and further gains would bring diminishing returns, while ramping up #2 (teacher knowledge) and #3 (price and ease of billing), since that's where they can pull ahead of competitors rather than just keep pace. A smart strategist will know that, even though value drivers #5, #6, and #7 are weak, those are less important to prioritize (for now) versus the opportunities for differentiation. Also, remember that a smart strategy leans into your organization's existing superpowers.

I'm using value mapping right now with a client, helping the leadership team decide where to focus the next 12 to 18 months to grow faster and stand out in a crowded arena. It was an eye-opening exercise for my client, influencing where to spend strategic calories over the next 12 months. Value drivers help guide decisions about what OKRs to pursue and the initiatives that will help achieve them. Combined with monthly strategy reviews, I am extremely confident that my client will accelerate their business in ways they didn't previously think possible.

If you're not using value mapping, what's your go-to starting tool for strategy development? I'd love to learn from you as well. Reach out if you want to learn more or if I can help in any way. -Erik